Madison Snaps: August 29, 2008

Today's image is titled Man of Bronze and was photographed by Loren Zemlikca.

Wisconsin football returns to the gridiron on Saturday, as the team starts the new season with a home opener against the Akron Zips at Camp Randall Stadium. There are high expectations once again this year for the Badgers, which are ranked No. 12 and 13 in the USA Today/Coaches and AP preseason polls, respectively, and a growing clamor from fans and other football followers that the team take the next step forward and return to a BCS bowl. The team isn't expected to have too much trouble in its first game of its 2008 campaign, and plans on extending its home-game winning streak to 15, which is currently the second-longest both in the nation and in school history.

Shot outside Camp Randall, this photo captures a bronze statue of Pat Richter at the entrance to Kellner Hall. One of the primary architects of Wisconsin football's ascension to national success and prominence, Richter is a legendary Badger athlete in football, baseball, and basketball who played for eight years in the NFL before returning to Madison, working first as an executive at Oscar Mayer before returning to the university as its athletic director, a position in which he served for 14 years before stepping down in 2004.

This is one of two statues outside the stadium, the other immortalizing Barry Alvarez, the former Wisconsin football head coach hired by Richter and his successor as athletic director at the university. Created by the Studio of Rotblatt Amrany in north Chicagoland, the statues were unveiled over the course of the 2006 football season following the renovation of Camp Randall.